LA cultural activist claims Salvadoran consul is trying to silence his criticism

A quarrel between a Los Angeles cultural activist and El Salvador’s representative in L.A. is revealing local Salvadoran Americans’ displeasure over the way their native country’s new administration treats its citizens abroad.

This month the tiff between Dagoberto Reyes, who’s run the Casa de Cultura de El Salvador for 16 years and El Salvador Consul General in L.A. Walter Duran seemed to come to a head. As he does every month, Reyes showed up at the Salvadoran consulate on Wilshire Boulevard a few weeks ago to pick up a $1800 check - his monthly salary for running the Casa de Cultura de El Salvador. But this time, Reyes says, consul general Walter Duran – who’s held the job for just one year - handed Reyes a letter from El Salvador’s foreign relations office.

It’s written in bureaucratic prose that’s vague at times and bookended by pro-forma greetings. The gist of it is that because of changes in “service,” the government has initiated Reyes’s transfer. He’ll continue to receive his salary, with a $300 monthly raise, at his new “administrative assistant” post in El Salvador’s embassy in Qatar. Yes, Qatar, next to Saudi Arabia, in the Persian Gulf.

“I thought it was a joke. Because the question is, what am I going to do in Qatar? I’m an artist, a sculptor, a cultural worker. If they had told me, ‘You’re going to go to Qatar because we want you to create a bust of the emir of Qatar.’ That would make sense,” Reyes said, holding the letter from El Salvador’s foreign relations office.

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Reyes has never belonged to El Salvador’s diplomatic corps. He immigrated to the U.S. 30 years ago to escape El Salvador’s bloody civil war. He’s 67 years old and a U.S. citizen now. In January he suffered a heart attack. Reyes describes the directive that he move halfway around the world to continue receiving his salary as an effort to silence criticism of the Salvadoran government and pave the way for a pro-administration cultural center in LA.

Some of that criticism surfaces on Radio Pipiles, the internet radio station Reyes operates out of a converted room in the Casa De La Cultura. Carlos Aguilar, the producer of the station’s public affairs talk show, says guests have praised the government’s public education efforts and have criticized the Salvadoran government’s neglect of its citizens beyond its borders.

“They don’t pay the attention, they don’t really concerned, they’re not really concerned about the well being of this segment of the population living in Los Angeles or somewhere else out of the country. Because, it looks like they only are concerned about the money that these people send out of the country,” Aguilar said.

That’s a big deal in Southern California, home to the largest concentration of the one-million Salvadorans who live in the United States. Politics has affected the lives and deaths of Aguilar and expatriate Salvadorans. El Salvador’s right-leaning government 30 years ago let death squads go after students, intellectuals and other perceived leftists. Two years ago, for the first time since the civil war, voters in El Salvador elected a left-leaning government that included former guerrilla leaders.

A spokesman said consul general Walter Duran would not comment on the matter. No one from El Salvador’s foreign relations department was available for comment. Salvadoran American activist Isabel Cardenas is a supporter of Duran.

“The man is wonderful, we really needed a consulate that would make people feel like, when they come there, that they can feel welcome, that they can talk to anyone there, get advice or whatever,” Cardenas said.

The quarrel between Reyes and the consul general has been months in the making. In their first meeting, Reyes said, Duran was cold and aloof. The spat is taking on larger proportions because of Reyes’s high visibility among Southland Salvadorans. The Casa de Cultura is housed in a fifth floor office above the Pollo Campero restaurant in L.A.’s heavily Central American Pico Union neighborhood. A youth theater group and chess fans who gather on Friday nights are the center’s most frequent users. The room’s bookshelves burst with the works of Salvadoran writers. A slightly larger than life sculpture of a female nude stands in front of the books. In 1993 Reyes unveiled in MacArthur Park a 15 foot by 7 foot sculpture dedicated to Salvadorans. It’s titled, “Why We Emigrate.”

Salvador Sanabria, who heads the immigrants’ rights non-profit El Rescate, says that work and Reyes’s constant promotion of Salvadoran art and literature makes him an icon among Salvadorans in L.A. Sanabria is also unhappy with consul Duran and, as he puts it, the current administration’s failure to help Salvadorans in the U.S. The quarrel with Reyes, he said, stands to inflict more damage to the consul general’s reputation.

“By trying to silence critical but constructive voices what this government is doing is forcing the diaspora to disconnect from the country of origin,” Sanabria said.

For now Dagoberto Reyes says he’s not quitting his job, and he plans to call the Salvadoran government’s bluff. He has a wife, two kids, a dog and a cat. He’s told the government of El Salvador to send plane tickets to Qatar for the entire household.